A NEW WAY TO DEAL WITH THE KREMLIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505080002-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 10, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: September 25, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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J I r' I
A9TICLE AFi'EA-AED
RICHARD PIPES
WASHINGTON TIMES
25 September 1984
A new way to deal
with the Kremlin
Every attempt made since
1917 to treat the Soviet
Union as another great
power concerned exclu-.
lively with safeguarding its
national security and increasing its'
international influence has ended
in failure.
At Yalta, for example, the United
States went out of its way to satisfy
what President Roosevelt consid-
ered Russia's legitimate national
interests. Eastern Europe was
acknowledged as Soviet sphere of
influence. 'Ib ensure its entrance
into the war against Japan - which
probably nothing short of a United
States threat to use atomic bombs
could have prevented in any event
- the Soviet Union was awarded
territories belonging to China and
Japan. The Ukraine and Belorussia,
constituent units of the U.S.S.R.,
received double representation in
the United Nations General Assem-
bly. None of these extravagant con-
cessions brought about the desired
results; their immediate outcome
was unprecedented Soviet expan-
sionism and the Cold War.
This experience, however, taught
the "pragmatists" nothing. A quar-
ter of a century later, President
Nixon decided to base detente on
the very same principle that had
served President Roosevelt so
badly at Yalta: that Soviet relations
were to rest on mutual respect of
the parties"'vital interests:' Disap-
pointments with detente notwith-
standing, the theme resounded
again in the speeches of President
Carter, who asked the Soviet Union
rhetorically whether it was pre-
,.pared to "promote a more stable
international environment in which
its own legitimate, peaceful con-
cerns can be pursued:'
How does the Soviet Union
exploit these false assumptions -
which prevail not only in the State
Department but in the foreign
policy departments of all the West-
ern countries?
. ? When business contracts for
projects in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern
Europe are signed,. preference is
given to countries which pursue an
accommodating policy toward
Moscow and are prepared to
"decouple" commercial relations
from political ones. Countries
which are deemed unfriendly or
(because of their resort to sanc-
tions and embargoes), "unreliable," .
are penalized. Such contracts
encourage political accommoda-
tion, but they also create a depend-
ence of the countries concerned on..
the communist client. In Germany
alone, some 300,000 jobs are said to
be directly or indirectly linked to
business with the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe. Since many of
these jobs are in so-called "sunset,"
or declining industries, liable to go
under without the benefit of sales
to communist countries, aggravat-
ing unemployment, an economic -
dependence is created that no Ger-
man government, regardless of its
political preferences, can ignore.
*.The Soviet Union has per-
suaded much of the U.S. business
community that if Washington con-
ducted a more "friendly" policy -
that is, reconciled itself to the
Kremlin's aggressive actions -
they would receive lush export
orders. The lure of these orders has
transformed U.S. business leaders
into the most vociferous neutralist
lobby in the country.
? In countries with powerful
communist trade unions, such as
Italy and France, the Soviet Union
takes advantage of their presence
to threaten industrial unrest to
firms that hesitate to enter into
commercial agreements with it.
? France's fear of the supremacy
of the "Anglo-Saxons" as well as of
the Germans on the Continent is
played upon to incite Paris to con-
duct an "independent" foreign
policy.
? The Soviet Union interferes in
democratic elections abroad by
bestowing its blessing on candi-
dates whose stand on international
issues happens to suit Moscow's
interests. They and their parties
are depicted as forces for "peace:'
whose election will lead to the
improvement of relations with
Moscow and lower the risk of war.
? The U.S.S.R. pressures the
West to enter with it into "mutual
security" accords, the most com-
prehensive of which was signed in
Helsinki in 1975. These create the
illusion that it shares with the
United States responsibility for
safeguarding the peace and integ-
rity of the Continent as a whole,
thereby undermining NATO and
pushing Western Europe towards
neutralism.
? Moscow increases or dimin-
ishes the flow of Jewish emigres in
accord with the status of overall
US.-Soviet relations as a device for
pressuring the American Jewish
community to influence its govern-
ment towards accommodation.
President Reagan notwith-
standing, one of the greatest
problems the United States faces
today is that those most responsible
for conducting foreign policy don't
understand how to deal with the
Kremlin.
The Department of State is the
branch of government specifically
responsible for diplomacy in all its
aspects, and this involves, first and
foremost, the peaceful resolution
of disagreements and conflicts
with other sovereign states. But
diplomacy is not synonymous with
foreign policy. Diplomats have an
instinctive aversion to violence and
an insurmountable suspicion of ide-
ology; the one is to them evidence
of professional failure, the other, a
hindrance to accords.
Foreign Service officers have as
much taste for ideas and political
strategies as trial lawyers have for
the philosophy of law. They squirm
at the very mention of the words
good and evil, which in their profes-
sional capacity they regard as
Continued
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2.
meaningless. They are capable of
drafting meticulously crafted posi-
tion papers setting out policy rec-
ommendations or options, without I
ever asking themselves what the:
ultimate purpose of these policies
is to be. Their attitude towards the
representative of even the most
hostile power is somewhat like that
of one attorney to another: they
never allow anger, indignation, or
any other emotion to enter into their
relationship, seeking instead to
base it on mutual professional
respect, safe in the knowledge that
crises come and go, but lawyers
stay on.
Essentially, diplomacy is a
device for settling disputes out of
court. The court, in the case of
international conflicts, being the
battlefield. It is an irreplaceable
method for resolving controversies
over such issues as treaties,
rescheduling of debts, fishing and
water rights, and the myriad of
other issues among states that life
constantly brings forth. But these
issues embrace only a part, and not
even necessarily the most impor-
tant part, of international relations
as practiced in the 20th centyry;
the latter include also military
power, ideology, and a host of other
matters that do not lend themselves
to resolution by diplomatic means.
As soon as international conflict is
shifted to this ground, diplomacy is
powerless.
Because totalitarian regimes
such as the Soviet Union do not
operate within a narrowly defined
concept of foreign policy, the col-
lective record of the world's foreign
service in dealing with them has
been most unimpressive. By virtue
of their professional upbringing,
diplomats could never take seri-
ously the ravings of a Lenin, a Hit-
ler or a Mao, and so they dismissed
them as rhetoric behind which had
to lie concealed the dictator's "real"
demands, and concentrated on dis-
covering what those alleged "real"
demands were, in order to bring
them to the negotiating table.
Appeasement, whether to Hitler or
of Stalin, so rampant in the foreign
offices of their day, was due neither
to stupidity nor to treason, but to a
deformation professionelle of for-
eign offices.
It is, therefore, no service to the
Department of State or the profes-
sion of diplomacy to charge them
with the responsibility for prob-
lems that they were never meant to
cope with.
This being the case, it would be
des- desirable for the [Znited_State&to_
create apew institution to monitor
Soviet activities globally. As of now,
neither the National Security Court-
Wt ,the,Department of S aatp,nor,the
Central Intelligence Agency ham
group of experts who follow from
day to ay the plans and activities
of Sovietpolicymaker
One way to remedy this
shortcoming would be to appoint a
State Department official, at the
rank of undersecretary or coun-
selor, to assume responsibility for
monitoring East-West relations and
Soviet strategy in the broadest
sense.
For this to happen, of course, the
secretary of state must first per-
suade himself that unlike the
United States, the Soviet Union has
a grand strategy that is not only
pragmatic but also ideological, and
not only regional but also global in
scope.
Until the United States develops
a more realistic view of the Soviet
Union, and the appropriate appara-
tus for dealing with the Kremlin,
the U.S. government will continue
to score diplomatic triumphs that
are foreign-policy disasters.
This essay is exerpted from a seg-
ment of Dr. Richard Pipes's new
book Survival Is Not Enough (to be
published in early 1985 by Simon
and Schuster) published in the sum-
mer issue of SURVEY, a journal of
East and West studies. He worked
recently in the National Security
Council and is now a professor of
history at Harvard.
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